Automatic card shufflers have been used by casinos since the 1980s and have helped revolutionize the gaming industry. Automatic card shufflers speed up play of casino games and may reduce cheating and advantage play. Automated shufflers may be configured to sit on a casino table or be incorporated therein.
The automatic shuffler industry is currently dominated by automatic shufflers which utilize rollers, elevators and bins to separate and randomly reorganize the cards. The shuffler described herein utilizes a method of separating a deck of cards into a lower portion and an upper portion at a pre-established deck position and grabbing and transporting the bottommost card from the upper portion into a post shuffle bin. This process occurs until all playing cards are randomly organized in the post shuffle bin.
The playing cards being randomly organized by the automatic shufflers have long been known to include asymmetrical rather than symmetrical backs as desired. That is, manufacturing tolerances during the printing, punching and cutting processes of 1/32″ are considered acceptable. Unfortunately, skilled players and cheaters can discern such differences in symmetry and use it to take advantage of the casino. Attempts have been made by card manufacturers to improve the tolerances but have not been successful. Card manufacturers have also attempted to create card backs which conceal or otherwise obfuscate the asymmetries. Again, such efforts have been futile.
Edge sorting is a method of advantage play that uses natural irregularities in the cut on the backs of cards to be able to identify certain groups of cards. By being able to identify critical cards, advantage players can improve their betting and playing decisions. During play of a game, an advantage player (or team of advantage players) turns cards to be able to distinguish important cards from the other cards. For example, using a card with left/right diamond asymmetry, an advantage player may align the cards so that full diamonds along the left edge correspond to an important card, and half-diamonds on the left edge corresponds to the other cards. An advantage player attempts to turn most cards in the deck or shoe to identify its group. After the cards are sorted, an advantage player observes the appropriate edge during play of a hand. By knowing the card's group, an advantage player can make decisions shifting the edge in his or her favor. Cheaters can accomplish the same objective by colluding with a casino supervisor who turns the appropriate cards before the decks are brought to a live game, or by a dealer during a live game.
For example, in Baccarat the important cards are 6s, 7s, 8s and 9s. If an advantage player knows that the first card to be dealt is from this group, the advantage player bets on the player hand. If the first card is not in this group, the advantage player bets on the banker hand. Such a strategy can provide a significant player edge. The embodiments of the present invention solve edge sorting using the modified cards and automatic playing card shuffler configured to read the same and determine card and deck orientation.
It would be advantageous to develop an automatic shuffler and playing card system configured to identify advantage players and cheats. It would be further advantageous to render the system suitable for use with most automatic card shufflers including those disclosed herein.